Prescription Drug Prices: The Rise In The Healthcare System

The prices of prescription drugs in the United States are by far the highest in the world. [1] On average, Europeans pay 40% less than Americans for the same medications. [2] Consumers have been resorting to several ways, sometimes putting themselves in harm’s way, to alleviate the burden of high prescription drug costs. Some buy their medications online or cross the borders to neighboring countries so they would be able to afford buying their needed medications. Others have resorted to the illegal act of selling their unused medications in online forums just to recover part of their expenses. Many factors contribute to the increased drug prices in the United States including research and

The cost of prescription drugs in America has risen to the level that most Americans could not afford them with out the help of an insurance plan. The greedy and capitalistic pharmaceutical companies rely on the United States to fund the future development of drugs with skyrocketing prices and enormous margins. Recently the issue has extended into the mainstream political arena, thanks in part to the new Medicare bill(2). With the push by congress for the importation of drugs from foreign sources, regardless of the potential long and short term consequences, the time to vocally support health care reform is upon the American public.

Prescription drug prices are on the rise in the United States. Currently, the United States does not implement a price control on prescription drugs. Every day the supply and demand for prescription drugs fluctuates. Pharmaceutical companies produce drugs that are necessary for survival. Therefore, it is necessary for research and development to continue in the United States. Those suffering the effects of exorbitant prices must do so until a generic form of a prescription drug is produced. Once approved by the FDA, new drugs will make their appearance on the market and patients will no longer suffer financially. Until then, it is necessary for pharmaceutical companies to price their drugs based on the idea of supply and demand. This produces the profit used to fund research. Price controls discourage innovation. If a price control were set in place, of course the price of prescription drugs would decrease. However, the development of new drugs decreases with it. Today’s generation would benefit from lower prices, while future generations would suffer from the loss of drug innovation.

In a speech based in Kentucky in March, Donald Trump called drug prices “outrageous” and has intended plans to fix these issues during his presidential years. These high priced drugs are affecting the Americans, and especially our health-care system. “Not only are drug manufacturers launching products with high prices, they are routinely raising the prices of existing drugs — even decades-old drugs — by double-digit rates.” (High-Cost Drugs - AHIP) Unlike other countries, America has nobody telling these medicine-supplying companies how cheap, or how expensive their products may be. Increasingly, due to no price barrier, insurers are raising deductible prices to pass the prices along. After mainstream drug patents expire,

Throughout the progression of our society we have been faced with extensive public policy issues that impact our country as a whole. Today, rising health costs in the United States has become one of the biggest threats to our essential growing economy. Rising health care cost has “trickle-down effect”, when private healthcare insurance companies raise insurance premiums. Companies that subsidize these premiums for their workers our then forced to raise prices. American companies then sequentially struggle to compete with countries on the global market. Another issue that significantly affected the rising cost in America is the uninsured and underinsured. In an effort to cover cost for underinsured patients’ hospitals raise costs for paying

Sherry Glied approaches one of the most critical and stringent issues currently tormenting the United States of America the rising cost of health care. The problem has represented a focal point on the agenda of virtually all political programs, but a solution has yet to be successfully implemented. The reasons as to why a solution is so difficult to find is pegged to the complexity of the problem itself, in the meaning that the causes of the rising health care costs are numerous and intricate. Sherry Glied assessed the causes of rising health care costs through the lenses of time frames. Specifically, she identified:

Health care costs are extraordinarily high and keep getting higher. Individuals in the US that do not have access to medical services are running as high as 43.4 million and This number has grown by over a million in each of the last three years. (AFSCME, n.d.). The rise of prescription drug

The older population also needs more medication to treat their ailments. Drug spending in the U.S. rose more than 11 percent in 2003 to over 180 billion dollars. Americans consume about 3 million prescriptions a year. People over the age of 65 spend an average of $2300.00 a year. That is just in co-pays. The co-pays for brand name drugs jumped 62 percent, from $16 to $25 in 2003. Most of these drugs have generic equivalents, but even those co-pays rose to an average of nine dollars. As a whole, retail prescriptions have increased 7.4 percent a year from 1993 to 2003, triple the inflation rate of 2.5 percent. (National Coalition of Healthcare, 2005, Facts about health care costs).

Either the government imposes price controls on the cost of prescription drugs, or the pharmaceutical companies will continue to reap huge

The costs of prescription drugs in the United States: pharmacists’ voice must be heard is an article released by the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy on April 16, 2016. The article addresses the rising cost prescription drugs in today’s society and how healthcare spending affects millions of citizens. The article stated that the reason why healthcare expenditure is rising is due to the aging population and the increasing prevalence of noncommunicable diseases. Without counting severe conditions, chronic conditions are highest in the older population ages 65 and above.

The prices in which the medication are set are necessary for research and development. Roy P. Vagelos, discusses about the problems regarding restricting pharmaceutical companies in the written source Are Prescription Drug Prices High?. For instance, it can reduce the profits to support research investments, since it costs at least $231 millions dollars in order to bring one new prescription medicine to the market and in a pharmaceutical company like Merck, there are at least 4500 researchers who work to develop products (Vagelos 1). In other words, it costs millions for researches to develop at least one new drug to present to the market and it also costs to pay researchers to help develop these new drugs. In addition, the article The Real Cost of “High Priced” Drugs,

Prescription drug prices rose three times faster than inflation in the decade between 1981 and 1991, making the pharmaceutical industry the nation's most profitable business. Prescription drugs even exceeded the rapidly rising inflation rate for all other medical services. They now represent at least 10% of all the medical

For almost a year now, prescription drugs continue to be one the pressing issues in healthcare reform. Drug pricing specifically, has made its way center stage as a result of numerous revenue-lifting actions from pharmaceutical companies, the most recent case being the arrest of Turing Pharmaceuticals’ CEO, Martin Shkreli. Shkreli was arrested on federal fraud charges a week before Christmas, but his infamy stems from his company’s price jack of Daraprim, an anti-parasite drug that is pivotal in the treatment of cancer and HIV patients. In at least 14 states, legislators have introduced “drug pricing transparency” bills, which have been designed to gather information from pharmaceutical companies about the cost to manufacture drugs.

You walk into the doctor one day and your world comes crashing down when you hear the bad news. You are diagnosed with a serious, life threatening disease that will need to be treated by expensive prescription drugs. You have a family of four and now unimaginable monthly bills to pay. Expensive prescription drug prices are a huge problem in America. Because of this many people have to make life threatening decisions, that no one should ever have to make. People who are sick are paying way too much for prescription drugs, and the prices are still continuing to skyrocket. Because of this they are cutting pills or going into other countries to buy their medication because there it’s more affordable. Drug Companies could reduce their drug prices which would still allow them to make enough profits while protecting the well-being of patients.

A substantial piece of the U.S market in the health sector is run by the prescription drugs and, therefore, making the U.S the global largest market of pharmaceuticals accounting for more than a third of the world’s expenditure on drugs. It is estimated that in 2014 slightly over $300 billion were spent on prescription drugs which accounts for roughly 10 cents of every dollar in the U.S healthcare market. The U.S expenditure on prescription drugs has been growing at an annual rate of 11% for the last 27 years between 1980 and 2007. But the expenditure has slowed between 2008 and 2013 to about 2% annual average which has been occasioned by several reasons including the 2008 financial quagmire which was also responsible for the reduction in the overall U.S health care costs, the application of controls towards insurer drug utilization and also the production of a less amount of new blockbuster drugs within that period (Institute for Healthcare Informatics, 2014)..